Flowers
by caoimhe
Summary: Dave, Abby, birthdays, flowers, denial. Pre-BSSM, so forget all that.


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[flowers]

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author: caoimhe

feedback: is always appreciated. 

disclaimer: Abby Lockhart and Dave Malucci- I disclaim thee. Consider thyselves disclaimed.

archive: my site, anywhere else just let me know.

spoilers: Dave's been fired? What? Dave's got a kid? Huh? No, actually, neither of these things have happened. It's your imagination.

summary: Dave, Abby, birthdays, flowers, denial. 

dedication: To Noa, who rocks my world and made me a Dabby, *and* beta-ed this fic for me. I heart Noa.

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He bought her flowers, for her birthday.

That was stupid. He bought them on a whim, knowing he would never give them to her. 

They were red. He didn't know what they were called- they weren't roses, and those were the only flowers he knew. But these ones were red, sort of- a kind of muted crimson. They weren't the most expensive bunch in the shop, but he'd liked them when he'd seen them, and he'd thought of her. 

He bought her flowers. Who was he kidding?

They died, of course. They lay on top of his battered coffee table, still wrapped in their pale lilac paper with the name of the florist branded across it, and those brilliant flaming petals wilted and fell and got scattered across his floor and his apartment smelt of dust and the thick, sweet incense of dying flowers.

His mother threw them out when she came to visit on Saturday, and she vacuumed, and heated up the dust.

He'd known he would never give them to her.

[***]

He found out about her birthday accidentally. He overheard her in the lounge, talking to Carter, and she mentioned it. October 12th. He remembered the date. He could never remember his sisters' birthdays, but he remembered Abby's.

It was something, wasn't it? He knew her birthday. He had something.

She'd said- to Carter- she'd said she hated her birthday. She'd said she thought it was jinxed. So he knew that too. 

He knew that, and he knew her middle name was Marie, because he heard her telling Randi. That was it, really. That was all he knew. But it was something. More than nothing.

He knew other stuff from listening to conversations, like that Jing-Mei was allergic to peanuts, and that Carter's sister brought him a musical tie every Christmas. No-one ever told him these things, but people talked around Dave like he wasn't there, like they couldn't see him, so he got to hear a lot.

So he bought her flowers, for her birthday.

[***]

He didn't sleep at night, if he was alone. Without the comfort of an anonymous blond beside him he got edgy, drank coffee, couldn't sleep. He sprawled across an unmade bed, gazing listlessly through the grime on his window into the sky, which wasn't deep blue like night skies were supposed to be, but a kind of sodium orange. Lurid and starless. The city burnt it out.

The cheap jewelry he used to buy for girls always used to go that same orangey color, and stain their skin. He remembered those glittering bits of junk, those hard plastic jewels (and then later glass), his tokens of teenage adoration. They cost like a dollar but they always used to work, they used to get him what he wanted. Girls were that easy, when you didn't care.

That shit was only worthless because he didn't mean it.

In the bottom of his drawer, wrapped in tissue paper, he had a plastic ring from a cracker that he kept because Abby had worn it for a whole day last Christmas after the staff party, and then left in the lounge by the coffee machine.

[***]

On her birthday, the day he didn't give her flowers, she was in a bad mood, and looked tired, and spoke acerbically through pursed lips, and he watched her nearly all day. She was real, and flawed, with shadows under her eyes, and he noticed every detail. She was real, not like the girls pinned up in his locker, or the numbers scribbled in his diary that he couldn't attach to faces. She was real, tangible, and sometimes she stood close to him, without realizing. And when she did, he could smell her apple shampoo, and he became so unbearably clichéd he had to walk away, before he compared her eyes to the color of the sky. (Which he couldn't. They weren't. They were brown, just brown, but hazel in sunshine, and flecked with light.)

He talked to her in the lounge. Outside there was snow on the ground already, and Abby muttered something about there always being snow on her birthday. The sky was clear, though, and the room was bathed in faint, washed-out sunlight. She came in and ignored him, though there was no one else in the room, and he wondered whether he should speak. And this bothered him, because he never wondered whether he should speak, he always just spoke; so he spoke.

"So, it's your birthday, huh?"

It wasn't Shakespeare, but it was all he had.

Abby flicked a withering look in his direction, and turned back to the coffee machine.

It wasn't that Dave didn't know when he wasn't wanted; it was simply that he chose to ignore it and carry on anyway.

"How old are you?"

"How old are _you?"_ Abby snapped.

"Twenty-eight."

This was a bad answer, apparently. "Twenty-eight? Great, that's just great. Good. Fine. I hope your hair goes grey and teeth fall out and you die of syphilis," said Abby.

Dave hesitated, and searched his vocabulary for something genuine, tried to define that feeling that flooded his veins when she spoke to him. But he wasn't used to it, that feeling, and he didn't have the words. All he had was silence, and flowers dying on the table at home.

He looked at the back of her neck- her hair was tied up- and looked at the smooth skin, encircled by a thin silver chain. If he closed his eyes he could trace her skin with his fingers, trail his lips along her collarbone, tangle his hands in her hair, and say things, say words that he didn't have. He could give her flowers for her birthday, and she would thank him by smiling.

[***]

Sometimes, he felt like he could change. Or like things were changing- like someday he could be in love and wake up with someone who loved him- like he could cook breakfast and have a dog and read a newspaper- like he could be in love.

But it was hard to change, and maybe too late. Most people had already written him off. He was a space-filler; he was comic relief to everyone else's tragedy, everyone else's love. He wasn't part of that- love, and good things, and Abby. Those things were somewhere above him, just out of reach. He wasn't part of that world.

Mostly, he didn't believe in love. And he didn't expect it, so he was never disappointed. Love was some abstract thing, something for grown-ups, for serious people like Abby and Luka. Not for Dave. That feeling, that warmth and that scent of apple shampoo, and that image when he closed his eyes, and those flowers on his table that wasn't love, he knew that. Love wasn't something he was part of. And it wasn't tangible, like Abby.

Luka gave her a necklace and Carter gave her chocolates, and she smiled but Dave didn't think she looked all that happy. Dave thought she looked like she wanted something more, somehow. He wondered what she did want; he wondered what she was thinking when she bit her lower lip and tapped her fingers like she was itching for a cigarette. 

He wanted to ask her what she thought, what images filled her mind when she closed her eyes. He would ask and she would turn to him with frank eyes and ask why he wanted to know and he wouldn't have an answer, of course.

But then she would have seen him, and maybe he could tell her that he bought her flowers for her birthday. 

And she would ask why but he wouldn't know, because it wasn't love, it wasn't love.

It wasn't love. But it was all he had.

[end]

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notes: I'd like to take this opportunity to shamelessly promote this dave-fic website that I created. There are so many fics about Dr. Dave around here, I thought he deserved his own archive to keep it all in one place... so, if anyone's written any dave-fic- of any kind- please be really, really cool and submit it. It's gonna be good, eventually. There's gonna be fic awards and everything. So, y'know. Submit stuff! /shameless self-promotion


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